He Runs (Part One) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the floor next to his feet. Hound trots over and eats sloppily, and Man rubs the dog’s hairless shoulders. An age old trick. Works every time.
    And they are friends again.
     
                                *********************
     
    It takes a couple of days but Man settles in to his new house, eating meat and drinking and trying to keep the baby alive. When the cooked meat comes to an end his interest in the farm house makes him search through it for anything he can take with him when it is time to leave. A nagging thought breaks through from the recesses of his mind, asks him if he has to leave.
    ‘I do,’ he says to himself. ‘I do. I do. I do.’
    His first investigation leads him to the pantry, a large, walk-in room that clings to the kitchen like an unnoticed birthmark. He opens the brown, oak door and steps back, amazed at the Aladdin’s cave before him.
    Tins of soup; at least fifty, a mix of four different flavours. Tins of mixed vegetables, of peaches and pineapple rings in syrupy gloop. A large plastic container filled with salt, useful for curing the meat. Man stops for a second and wonders where they found all of this food. Had they been scavenging? Had they always been here? Had they been Doomsday preppers? They could have once been like him, weary travellers who stumbled across the farm when other people lived here. Maybe they took it from them, just as he had done to them.
    Man dismisses the thought as irrelevant and peruses the soup collection. His eyes flit up and down, scanning the options and eventually they stop on oxtail. He retrieves the tin and inspects it. What sloshes inside could be out of date but he doesn’t care. He knows that his stomach has hardened over time. And luckily for him, this tin comes with a ring pull on the lid. No need to hunt for a can opener or fuck around with his rusted blade.
    He returns to the kitchen, rips off the lid and pours the contents into a small cauldron that hangs over the glowing fire. The thick brown liquid slaps against metal and then sizzles quietly.
    Man stirs the soup and watches Emma in the high chair, wriggling around, happy and content.
    ‘Hey, little girl!’ says Man. She ignores him, grabs at her curly hair and pulls. ‘Emma. Emma.’ Still nothing. So Man decides to give up. At least she isn’t crying. It took a few days but she learned to stop when Man ignored her. She only cries when she truly needs something. If everything goes to plan she’ll forget her initial programming and Man will fill the surrogacy void.
    Man sits at the table, a mug of steaming oxtail soup clutched in his hands. Earlier, while searching through the guest room for photos or clues to disprove his theories regarding ownership of the house, he found a selection of books. He sifted through them, one by one, tossing some aside and keeping the others in front of him. He took four books from the guest room and on the kitchen table sits his first choice, a novel he picked out of sheer irony. Slaughterhouse Five .
    Man flicks through the pages, having read Vonnegut’s work at school, and stops at a random page. He looks over the browned paper and what appears before him is enough to pull his eyeballs from their sockets. And fill them with tears. Six words. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
    He feels the space behind his face starting to burn, the searing friction of mental cogs, the screeching of rarely used joints, all coming together in an anti-nihilistic harmony. In his throat he can feel his voice box revving, readying itself to join in the despair. He clenches his teeth and shakes his head until the feelings subside. A hysterical bout would have guaranteed Emma’s vocals springing back into action, a sound that he does not miss at all.
    His mouth slurps at the soup and he flicks through the book, being careful not to stop on the same page as before. After a minute he gets bored and tosses the book to one side. He lifts the mug to his